For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature in all its branches, in both the Irish and English languages.
The island's most widely-known literary works are undoubtedly in English. Particularly famous examples of such works are those of James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature; William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney.
In Ireland, people dance in the streets on Easter Sunday. The dancers compete for the prize of a cake.
In Ireland Easter is a very sacred time of fasting and prayer. On Easter Saturday at church hundreds of small candles are lit off the Paschal candle that has been blessed by the priest. On Easter Sunday a quiet meal is eaten at home. Traditional Easter meal of leek soup and roasted spring lamb.
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have different currencies.
In the Republic of Ireland the currency used is the Euro and in Northern Ireland the currency used is the Pound Sterling.